Owl City/Kate Havnevik/Unicorn Kid - Rock'n'Roll Hotel - September 12 2009

Unicorn Kid - Time to challenge myself with something beyond my comfort zone with this show sandwiched between Motorhead, Hugh Cornwell and Dead Meadow. The Unicorn Kid comes out and plays his computer. Lots of pop melodies, electronic thrust with the Kid bobbing his head whilst wearing his furry lion head hat. He is from Scotland and went over well with the excitable crowd. Geeze, they looked young. So that's why this started at 7:30 on a Saturday night (and the sold out show had a good early crowd). When the Kid asked for hands in the air, I thought I was looking the entire first issue of Dischord's first release of the Teen Idles ep. ($10 to the first person who gets the reference without looking it up). Anyway, I was as distracted by non musical issues during this set as I am writing this up. But it went over well with the crowd.

Kate Havnevik - Kate plays acoustic guitar and sings with some pop recordings playing in the background. She is from Norway and had a Coco Rosie light kind of sound (with me, that is a compliment). This was lightly enjoyable, although the crowd seemed to like the more up tempo styling of the first act. God, this crowd is young, but teen. What television show is breaking these acts? I don't have kids and am not up on youth culture. I do feel it's kind of cool to infiltrate this type of show at an indie level at the Rock'n'Roll Hotel as opposed to seeing Hannah Montana at the Verizon. That is refreshing in a weird way.

Owl City - Ok, I can no longer hide my mistake. I thought I was buying a ticket for Owl Service, an interesting UK folk band. So I confused the owl bands. I have long since given up trying to figure out the differences between wolf bands (Wolf Eyes, Wolfmother, Wolf Parade, etc.) and am getting to the point of skipping all animal bands. Animal Collective is ok because they cover the entire kingdom, although I've seen them twice and am less interested in seeing them again. Anyway, Owl City did come out with a real band as well as some electronics, so that was nice. Some good pop melodies here, quite polished and nothing wildly original. The soundman was pumping a pedal plugged into the sound board, but I couldn't here what resulted. A bit of violin was nice and a real drummer. The crowd dug it and all in all, it's good to balance my diet by having this between Hugh Cornwell, Dead Meadow, movies like The World's Greatest Dad and In the Loop and books about corporate fraud.

Quote of the night: "Oh my god, I feel like I'm actually cool." from one of the half dozen people my age present in the club (later it went up by a dozen or so). I guess most were here as chaperones and drivers.